Kuwait has made a welcome four million dollar contribution to fund projects to improve people's lives in war-wracked Syria, where over a third of the population millions face hunger daily, the United Nations World Food Programme has announced.
The projects will benefit some 20,000 people whose lives and livelihoods have been torn apart by years of conflict in Syria where 6.5 million people don't know where their next meal is coming from WFP said.
"This contribution from the State of Kuwait will support WFP in its efforts to help Syrian families recover from the devastating effects of displacement and give them the means to gradually rebuild their lives,” says WFP Country Director and Representative in Syria Corinne Fleischer.
“It is vital that families who have lost everything in the war can rebuild their livelihoods and once again become self-sufficient,” Fleischer said.
The Kuwait funds will enable WFP and its partners to rehabilitate vital community assets in rural areas, which will allow smallholder farmers to produce more of their own food, the UN agency said.
WFP said it will also use the money to provide vocational training to those who are fit to work. Each family of five will receive WFP food rations for six months to cover their food needs during their participation in the programmes, the agency noted.
After almost eight years of conflict in Syria, poverty is endemic and many lack the means to rebuild their livelihoods, according to WFP.
“These funds will make a real difference for Syrian families who have lost so much and who continue to suffer as their country struggles to recover," said WFP's Director in the UAE and Representative to the GCC region, Mageed Yahia.
Kuwait has been at the forefront of humanitarian support for Syria since the beginning of the crisis and has given over 139 million dollars to support WFP operations in Syria since 2013. Its government hosted three international humanitarian pledging conferences for Syria, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and co-hosted the 2016 Syria donor conference in London.
Since 2016, WFP – in addition to its regular food assistance operations – has been supporting vulnerable Syrian families with programmes designed to help them rebuild their livelihoods. To date, some 250,000 people in 13 of Syria’s 14 governorates have benefited from WFP’s livelihoods programmes.
WFP aims to increase its livelihoods activities in 2019 if it can secure the funding to do so and currently helps feed three million conflict-affected people in Syria every month, providing them with rations of rice, wheat, vegetable oil, lentils, sugar and salt. Each ration contains enough food to feed a family of five for one month, said the agency.
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